Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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I’ve been blogging about farming, ecology and politics since 2012. I welcome well-tempered discussion. Please note that if you’re a new commenter, or if you include a lot of links, your comment will go into the moderation queue before publication. I sometimes miss comments in the queue so feel free to nudge me via the Contact Form if your comment fails to appear.
Posted on January 11, 2012 | 5 Comments
Last week I went to the Oxford Real Farming Conference. When I got back I discovered that our packing tent had blown away in the gales, which just goes to prove that you should never, ever leave your farm for any reason, least of all conferences and other such trifles. But leave the farm I did, so I thought I might as well make the most of it by reporting back on the conference – which actually was excellent in many ways, and well worth attending (packing tent excepted). My admiration extends as ever to Colin Tudge and Ruth West …
Continue readingPosted on January 1, 2012 | 3 Comments
Having recently put away several festive meals which varied in all respects save the ubiquitous roast potato, I thought the time was right to pen something about this stalwart vegetable. The potato always seems to play second fiddle to wheat. UK farmers devote 42% of cropped land to wheat, and only 3% to potatoes – even if, scandalously, around 47% of the wheat is fed to livestock (the stats are here). Potatoes also seem to come off second best in the alternative farming movement. William Cobbett, the founding father of English agricultural radicalism, wrote in Cottage Economy (1822) that the potato …
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